


sparkler

by naveed



Category: Druck | SKAM (Germany)
Genre: Coming Out, F/F, Feelings Are Difficult, Tenderness, i'd never heard sleepover by hayley kiyoko until i accidentally wrote it myself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-22 20:16:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18534724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naveed/pseuds/naveed
Summary: we'll watch the girl with the long soft sighyou'll come alive with those late night eyesand surprise me with everything you do[ surprise me 44 - tunng ]





	sparkler

**Author's Note:**

> idk how my first druck fic ended up being about these two and not jotteo (rise) or davenzi but when the inspirations there its there. also just a little note i think its implied throughout skam and druck that ingrid/leonie was already friends with sara throughout the eva/hanna/jonas fallout but ive just changed it a little so that leonie met sara after her friendship with hanna was over. and finally this is set after those texts from the beginning of episode 2 <3

It was never about Jonas, really.

Leonie saw Hanna on her first day of school. Quiet, timid, and wide-eyed; Hanna sat on the far-east of the classroom, and Leonie on the west. A boy whose name she ignores sits next to her, eagerly asking what other classes they might have together, but Leonie is somewhere else. She watches as the girl with bright red hair darts her eyes all over the room, visibly daunted by all her new classmates. She looks so frightened. So when the two of them make eye contact, Leonie makes sure to smile.

She stands up while the boy is still talking, and makes her way to the other side of the room. “Hey,” she says. Hanna is almost cowering away. “I’m Leonie. Can I sit here?”

That’s all it took. Hanna said recently, she couldn’t believe the coolest girl in class wanted to be her friend. And Leonie never said it back, but she couldn’t believe the most beautiful, kind, and funny girl _she’d_ ever met, had her held on such a pedestal.

Well, Jonas was cool too. And all the other girls were getting boyfriends by now, so why shouldn’t she? It’s not like she didn’t like him – prior to dating, he was one of her best friends. But Jonas’ feelings were left unknown to Leonie for so long that she would wonder why she even bothers. Hanna says, _“that’s just what boys are like”_ , and Leonie agrees. Useless, she thinks. Boys are useless.

Girls, on the contrary, are brilliant.

That is, until you catch them with their tongue down your boyfriend’s throat, in the locker room after everyone is gone, but you’ve forgotten your water bottle. And the two of them stare blankly at you, until he says, _“I’m sorry”_ , but how sorry can he be? And while he fumbles to explain himself, _she_ says nothing. She stands there, looking between him and you and then her feet, and says _nothing_. She’d rather take a flimsy relationship with him over an indestructible friendship with you. And of course you’re angry at Jonas – of course you are – but it’s not about him. It was never about him.

And this? This isn’t about Matteo.

Ugh! Matteo, Matteo, Matteo. Leonie doesn’t know his situation at all, but she’s convinced his head is not screwed on correctly. Either that, or he really is as much of a dick as he comes across. For Sara’s sake, she hopes it’s the first.

Another useless boy. Another beautiful best friend.

But Sara isn’t Hanna, that’s for sure. When Sara and Leonie first spoke, it was like they’d known each other their entire lives. It was so natural, so easy, and after five minutes of knowing each other they were in fits of giggles. It never faded, either. They speak every day, closer than they’ve ever been with anyone else. This is a friendship that can stand the test of time. This is a friendship stronger than any romance.

This feels nothing like it would have all those years ago. It’s more real. She knows what’s happening. The awareness of what she feels makes it easier for Leonie to just let it fizzle in the background. What she has with Sara just isn’t worth throwing away.

But when they stay the night at each other’s places, cuddled together in bed and falling asleep together like girls can just _do_ , Leonie sometimes wonders how much longer she can pretend.

“Matteo’s ghosting me,” Sara confesses one night over text. “I had planned on seeing him today but he isn’t answering, and I can see that he read my messages.”

Typical, Leonie thinks. She tells her to call him. At least then, she’s tried to help.

Sara says she doesn’t want to seem pushy. Secretly, that’s what Leonie loves so much about her. Sara does things with her whole heart. She’s completely open and very compassionate. She can say when someone’s upset her. She can hold her ground, and have fun. Why is she holding back on that for Matteo?

Sara doesn’t even know the answer to that herself. When she was with Matteo the evening they got together, she just went with what she thought he wanted. He’d invited her over. He’d kissed her at the party. He seems apathetic tonight, but that’s just him. They’re studying, he’s tired, it’s understandable. But it seems right, you know, from the outside. They should be getting together, right? You can’t just spend so much time making out with a boy, and not have feelings for him deep down. After all, all the other girls are getting boyfriends by now. Why shouldn’t she?

But it’s not even been a week, and there’s no heart in it. Sara’s making the effort, but for what? For Matteo to not even message her back?

She wants to put her heart into it. But her heart is dragging her elsewhere. Talk to Leonie, her heart says; Leonie will understand. Leonie puts the effort in. Who needs boys when you’ve got Leonie?

Her phone lights up with a message, reading _come over to my place_. Sara had her shoes on already.

-

“I think we should just forget about boys completely.”

Sara sits with her head in Leonie’s lap, dozing in the fairy-lit room. Leonie runs her hands through the dirty blonde hair, gently teasing out the knots that tighten around her fingers. Sara has her eyes closed, relaxed into the feeling. When she opens them again, she focuses on the photos stuck to Leonie’s wardrobe door. In the low light she can only make out a few; the first a selfie from the second time they ever hung out, taken exactly where they are now. It makes her smile. Next to it, there’s a photo of Jonas. Next to that, there’s a gap.

“You would say that, wouldn’t you?” she replies.

Leonie huffs in mock offence.

“I just mean,” Sara backtracks, “since that whole thing happened, it just sounds like you’re not really interested in boys anymore? Like, you’ve not been into anyone the whole time we’ve been friends.”

“Maybe…” Leonie ponders, combing out the last of the tangles, “maybe I just realised that girls are more important to each other than boys.”

Sara hums in approval, before letting out a tired sigh. “I wish I could just date girls instead. Girls don’t blow so hot and cold with each other like this. And you’ve never messed me around like Matteo does.” Sara turns over suddenly, lying on her back and looking up at Leonie. “I deserve someone like you.”

Leonie can’t respond. She just smiles softly while they gaze at each other. Sara’s tough on the outside, and first and foremost she’s fed up with Matteo, but she still seems hurt beneath it. Her heart is tugging her two different ways – what she knows, and what she feels. Of course she deserves better. Leonie brushes one strand of hair away from Sara’s eyes. Sara smiles back at her.

“Why are you with Matteo?”

Sara rolls off Leonie’s lap with a dramatic sigh. “I don’t even know,” she mumbles into the mattress. “It’s not like I don’t like him, I mean, he’s sweet and everything. It’s just…” she trails off, propping her head up on her arms and looking back to Leonie. “I guess it seemed like the right thing to do.”

“The right thing to do?” Leonie raises her eyebrows. “He’s not a charity case. Was it the right thing for you?”

Sara laughs half-heartedly. “Well now I don’t think it was right for either of us.”

Leonie shakes her head, and goes to lie down next to her best friend. Putting on her sternest of voices, she says; “You need to think about what you want. No one else.”

Sara turns onto her back and hangs her hair over the edge of the bed. Tangle-free. She squeezes her eyes together, collecting her thoughts, and forces her heart and her head to co-operate, for once. She breathes in deeply before saying; “I think I just want you, to be honest.”

“Me? Or someone like me?”

“You,” Sara furrows her eyebrows again, “I just want to do the stuff I should be doing with Matteo, but with you.”

“Right,” Leonie starts, trying to make sense of this in her head. It’s just Sara. She’s sorting through her own shit right now; she doesn’t mean it how it sounds. “But not all of it… surely?”

Sara avoids eye contact, quietly replying, “I don’t know.”

Leonie stays silent for a moment, gentle gaze remaining on Sara’s face. She’s beginning to flush red, most likely from being upside down, but maybe not. “Okay,” Leonie turns onto her back and hangs her head over the edge like Sara. “Then, what things do you think you should be doing with Matteo?”

“Kissing,” Sara answers immediately, then catches herself. “Well, I mean, it’s still nice with Matteo. But it’d just be nicer with a girl. I think. And things like sleeping together – not _sleeping_ together, but like, sleeping, in a bed. I haven’t done that with him but I have with you. And it was nice with you. So… why would I do it with him when it’s already nice with you?”

Leonie’s heart beats a little faster. She can feel it in her throat. Trying to force it back down, she says, “because he’s your boyfriend?”

“I don’t think he is,” Sara sighs heavily. “I think he’s gay, actually.”

“What?”

Sara turns her head suddenly to face Leonie. “Are _you_ gay?”

“…what?”

“I’m not trying to be rude,” Sara’s voice is soft and inoffensive, “you just… kind of give me those vibes at the moment.”

Leonie avoids eye contact as she thinks this through. She should bite the bullet. Just tell Sara the truth – or the selective truth, anyway. Or the whole truth. No, not the whole truth. I’m gay. Yeah, I’m a lesbian. You? Never. Just friends. Always. Sorry.

“Yeah,” Leonie says. “I am.”

Sara grins. “Cool.”

Okay.

Anti-climactic, but okay. Leonie didn’t exactly want a huge fuss anyway. And a grin and a “cool” is so Sara.

Leonie slowly looks back up at Sara’s eyes again, to find she hasn’t stopped staring at her. Now that they’re facing each other, they’re a lot closer together. Sara’s smile fades as they hold eye contact, and Leonie watches her expression change to one that seems kind of fascinated, or kind of scared. Like she’s trying to work something out. Her lips part ever so slightly and her eyes flicker across Leonie’s face. She looks like she’s trying to words to say, and then, sure enough;

“Don’t think I’m doing this cause of what you just told me.”

Sara rolls onto her side and presses her lips to Leonie’s.

There’s no explosions or fireworks or bubbling stomach acids. The quiet of the room just swallows them up. It makes Leonie feel small. Outside of this room, the whole, enormous world is still moving. Time hasn’t stopped, but it passes without worry. And best of all, it doesn’t feel weird at all. It feels nice. Like this is how they belong. Leonie rests her hand on Sara’s cheek.

Sara pulls back but not all the way. Her gaze falls to the space between them and she steadies her breathing again. Why now, of all times, does she have to go coy? She needs something to say, something to explain this all away, but her brain gives her nothing. It’s just happening. She’s just _there_ , abandoned by her own head, which isn’t supposed to leave you, ever. You need your head. It’s where all your thoughts are. And without your head, you’re just a body with a heart, making dumb decisions; and things that have happened are still there, and things that are happening are still happening. And suddenly, you’re lost in the middle of it all, no head and all heart. And the heart is the worst bit.

The silence isn’t too comfortable anymore. Leonie rubs a gentle circle on the cheekbone beneath her thumb, and in a moment of contemplation, places a second small kiss on Sara’s lips.

Eventually, she whispers, “you’re the wrong way around.”

“What do you mean?”

“You and Matteo,” Sara looks up to Leonie’s eyes for only a split second, anxious. “I’m meant to love him and be friends with you. But you’re the wrong way around,” she starts to choke up, “and now – and now I don’t even know what’s happening anymore.”

“Hey,” Leonie pulls her in and wraps her arms tightly around her shoulders. “Don’t cry. It’s okay.”

Sara buries her face in the crook of Leonie’s neck, taking deep breaths as Leonie rubs circles on her back. “I’m not crying,” she mumbles. She pulls away and shuffles down the mattress until her head is resting on Leonie’s tummy. She could probably fall asleep in the middle of all these exhausting emotions. “Do you like me?” she asks, closing her eyes. “In a lesbian way?”

Leonie can’t help stifling a giggle. “In a lesbian way?”

“Just answer it,” Sara huffs.

Leonie doesn’t really want to answer it, not outright. But she’s not done with the bullet biting. And the selective truth won’t get her anywhere. Subconsciously, she starts playing with Sara’s hair again. “Do you want me to?”

“Yeah,” Sara says, forcing clarity. “I want you to. I think that’s how I like you.” She cranes her neck up a little and opens her eyes to say, “I don’t kiss just anyone, you know.”

“Well, me neither.”

“Can you give me a straight answer, please?”

“Yes,” Leonie sighs. “Yeah, I like you. In a lesbian way. I have for a while.”

“That’s cool,” Sara closes her eyes again. “And so… do you think we could be girlfriends?”

“If that’s how you want to call it.”

Sara sits up to face Leonie, cross-legged beside her waist. “It is,” she says firmly. “I want you to be my girlfriend.”

Leonie smiles up at her. “Then that’s what I’ll be.”

Sara smiles back, before leaning over and kissing Leonie herself. No explosions. No fireworks. But inside each of their tummies there’s a little sparkler, creating miniscule stars and beams. It doesn’t need to be loud or bright or a hundred exciting colours. It glows and fizzes and passes the time, softly until they fall asleep, warm, and cuddled in each other’s arms. Sara's head and heart come together again. They want the same thing. Let's stay here forever, her head says. Okay, says her heart.


End file.
